Sneaking in another good one, before the deadline

Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave

And here we have a full Cannonball, completed at the last possible moment! That’s fine though, because I’m at least finishing up with an excellent book. Everyone Brave is Forgiven is the interwoven tale of three interesting and intrepid characters, set in World War II London. From their very first introductions, till the bitter end of the story, I was so involved with them that I genuinely worried for them, given the fact that they were, you know, in an active war zone and all.

The best thing, by far, about this book, is the quality of the writing. Cleave manages to write the most brilliant of dialogue, with characters with far sharper wits than I; totally appropriate, yet unique metaphors & groupings of words that make you say “yes! This!” in your head a lot (Example: She felt five years old, and five hundred. Here was the remainder of ten thousand educations, the bones drifted down to this depth. It was the fossil of one’s country. She ached, because the war had cut the thin cord that bound each child to its ancestors with links made from cross-stitch and calligraphy. She walked up into the corridor, trembling. The school was absolutely silent. How violent it was, this peace where children’s voices should be. The ache in her chest hardened to anger, until she shook with it.) ; and just has a smoothness and ease of words that I admire and appreciate. One warning though: the language – period appropriate, racist, ableist ball of puke that it is- does take some getting used to, but there’s nothing to be done about that; there’s a reason these words hurt now, and it’s because of how they were used then. The idea that you could write a novel set in the then without them is absurd, even if it’s cringe-producing to read it now. I actually find it heartening to know how jarring, harsh, and out of place words like ‘retard’ and ‘mongrel’ are to me, especially as applied to young children. The fact that they were little barbs placed among the rest of the text is a good thing, in my book.

Another jarring byproduct of this tale is realizing that I had not considered what would have happened to these unwanted children (because the idea that children are unwanted is another antithetical thought to me) during wartime. But as shown by our own current refugee crises (crisES, plural!!!), people continue to act sub-humanly to others, even when we need them to be at their best, unfortunately. And so, these ‘rejected remainders’ of children did get left behind, and thank god they had someone as wonderful as Mary North on their side. Ms. North, from a family of means, joins up for the war effort immediately after learning that Britain has entered the war, thinking she will be quite apt as a spy. Instead, she is enlisted to become a teacher, a position from which she is promptly fired, because she cares to much for the children in her charge. As children are evacuated from London, she pesters the man in charge of finding someone to educate those left behind (“those too complicated to educate, or too simple”), until Tom gives her a classroom of her own to run. During all that pestering, Tom and Mary become close, and we also are introduced to Tom’s roommate, Alistair, who becomes a captain in His Majesty’s army, and loses some of his hopeful shine along the way.

Watching Tom, Alistair, and (for me, particularly) Mary navigate their way through the complicated and confusing catastrophe that has become their home, is thoroughly addicting, heartbreaking, and all too real. It’s a book about war, of course, but it’s also – even more so – about people, and living through, around, and in the middle of a war. And how it changes you, and the people around you; and the things it does not change (Hello: prejudice, Why don’t you wander along now that we have more important things to think about, what say you?). It’s so lovely and painful and heartbreaking and heart-mending, that I want you to read it, but I also want to protect you from it, if I can. As if there could be any further trigger warnings necessary than: Humans being their own stupid selves, on a grand and tiny scale.

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